Happy Mom and Apple Pie Month & Tolkein Week

I have a "boo-boo" on my finger (left index, at least it's not the right). Our shower door is not quite square, and in order to get it shut water-tight, you have to lift it a bit to get it to sit in it's bed (it's not a slider, it's hinged). I seem to have found something sharp because I nipped my finger "good", right on the tip. I glued the loose bit back on, and wore a band-aid for a while (sooner or later I always wash dishes and they come off, so I prefer super-glue). It's right on the tip so my typing is rather slowed and a bit clumsy. I've tried both using the nail and the front instead of the top of the pad- but you know how it is when you have a physical action programmed in. It's healing pretty well, but I keep hitting it a bit harder than I intended and going "ouch". At the same time I got a "glitter butterfly" on that hand on Saturday, and it's still looking fine. I really enjoy those, far more than one would expect. I figure I'm noticing it more because I keep looking at my hand.

Fall is progressing- we are getting flashes of yellow and red, but mostly the tone of the green is mellowing out. We are still getting the stray bloom from the petunia and morning glories, and even the sweet William that started in the spring. The nasturtiums are just going crazy. I've so enjoyed them this year. The mint is blooming- and so is the "flowering bamboo" (invasive knotweed).
The kittens are, as expected, beginning to scamper about and get underfoot. It makes me feel more secure to know that they are already on the waiting list at the shelter. I must make an appointment to get Zoloft spayed. At this point she's still nursing, but it seems incredible because when she does, the bulk of the four of them seems equal to her own. No wonder she keeps eating and drinking all the time.

This weekend we did two Pagan Pride Days: Saturday was the Southern New Hampshire Pagan Pride Day. It's gotten bigger every year, but recently they've been using the Unitarian Universalist Church in Manchester, which it has SO outgrown, and if we wanted to be inside we could have only gotten two tables, so we took an outdoor spot. Because it was raining (just a little, but off and on) we put sides along the back (mostly because we were backed into wet bushes). The big problem when it rains is that you want to get the tables in far enough so that the people can get under the roof (and not have the rain running down their necks). We put up three tables in a U around the edges (just in from the dripping), which allowed people to actually come into the middle, and the girls just wedged in as close as they could manage in the corners. I simply could not fit. I did a workshop on heathens, and spend most of the rest of the time talking to friends.
I was very pleased that they were representing far more than the usual Wiccan pagans. They asked me to bring stuff to represent a heathen altar (or harrow), which I did, but when we got there it turned out the "altars" they were using were actually short pillars (about 8x8") on which they usually put the corner candles. So I piled stuff around it (actually covered the top with the napkin we'd wrapped the Thor statue in for padding)- as did the others. There was one done by the Strega, and one done by the Druids, the Heathen one, and, of course, a Wiccan one. I don't know whether it was Raven Grimassi who put up the Stregheria altar, probably not, he seemed to just be passing through. They did get Ceisiwr Serith to do the ADF (druid) altar. (You probably don't recognize the names, but they are both pretty well known authors in pagan circles.) I was impressed that Cei managed to represent the pole that the Ár nDraíocht Féin generally have at their service. (it was a straight bit of branch in a plant pot, but good for them.) I didn't get to go to Cei's workshop as they scheduled me against him. Feh.
I brought the Thor image from our altar, an offering bowl, the branch for sprinkling mead on the folk (something I've always considered rather icky), and a large horn. Oh yes, and a big hammer. I'd tried to find something to represent an oath ring, but couldn't. I opted against putting up weapons, although some groups do. Actually, I did go through a lot of my books to try to get a range of what is done- each group does it a bit differently. (If you can't get the heathens to agree on anything, how will we ever get all the pagans to cooperate?) Luckily for me, the people who showed up at the workshop were far more interested in the gods than in the modern movement, so I didn't have to speak for people I'm sure would much rather not have me speaking for them.
Because of the rain, started packing up at 4:30, just as soon as we were allowed to- rather than staying to try to entice any straggling potential customers. We got home at 6:20 which gave me time to change out of my "viking" clothes and get up to the Community Pot luck. I do like to go to those, and it started at 6:30 (I was a couple of minutes late). They are repaving Holt Road and really wish I'd cut down the bamboo and get rid of Wolf's stuff. I wish it too. We went to bed early because we had to get up at 6.
Sunday was the Southern Mass. Pagan Pride Day down in Lakeville, Massachusetts. It's much bigger than NH, and seems to be in a fairly well to do neighborhood. Last year it POURED and we still made great money. Last year we'd also been at the back, so I stuck in our second pop-up figuring we could hang it off the back and have a bit more room. Sadly, they like us, so they moved us up to the front- and there was no space off the back to put it. We were next to Alchemy, our friends Tish and Andrew, but she was alone this time, and her pop-up was rather crippled. She might have made it work somehow, but luckily, we had an extra one.
I had checked the website and not seen my name in the list of presenters, but when I was getting ready to go to a workshop by our friend Raven Kaldera, I saw that I was indeed on the schedule (Dream Interpretation and Omens- Divination without tools). Good thing I checked.
The weather was better- it had been threatening on the two and a half hour trip down, but the sun came out and so Willow could put out her silk of silks. Kat put up a tent wall to protect her from the sun rather than rain. Oddly enough, we made more money Saturday than Sunday- I think it was because there were so many more vendors on Sunday we had more competition for the available sales. But we didn't do badly either day. I caught Chris Lafond's first workshop on astrology, but missed "Hey, baby, what's your rising sign?" because I was wandering around looking at all the other shops and readers. Megan and Dennis are very lucky that I didn't get them a companion lawn gnome for the one I got them this spring, the seller has a few very funny ones. I particularly liked the one that looks like someone punted a gnome and he landed pointy hat down in the ground. It's basically a gnome from about the nose down, only upside down. Very funny. He also had a plaque that said "Don't piss off the fairies!", I guess that's what the gnome did.
The music was very nice, in between the live performers they played Blackmore Knight music- although it did gradually get louder as the day went on so that by the end of the day Willow and Kat had to yell over it to talk to the customers. (I told you, they liked us so they moved us up front, sigh.) I had the usual embarrassing bunch of people coming to tell me how wonderful I was- and who's names I couldn't remember. I hate that! (Not being told I'm wonderful, but not being able to remember their names.) Raven and the Asphodel Choir sang, and afterwards we kept their guitars behind our booth. He thinks we should get some of my booklets re-published by Lulu. I think I should go over them first.
Actually, that's what I spent most of the week doing- going over the cookbooks in the computer because I seem to have lost the masters for them. In theory I should be able to just print out a new copy and add illustrations, but I have to re-format to make room for the illos, and I keep finding little typos- I've finally learned how to make the computer do the raised º for degrees, and I must, of course, edit the "chatty parts" of the recipes. I'd hoped to get the Litha and Yule booklets redone, but I didn't. (I was thiiis close!) Sadly, what I did was to stay up until about three most of the days last week, and this week, although I'm also trying to get them done before NEXT week (Eastern Mass Pagan Pride), I'm also going to bed before 10 every day and trying to get my sleep patterns back to normal.
The last, funny, story from Southeastern Mass was that I was looking forward to catching Raven's second workshop on Northern Shamanism, and actually got to it, but he didn't show. Since I knew what he was wearing- both he and Josh were in bright orange (amber?), but they were not to be found, and their instruments were gone from behind our booth. So I went back and shared my supposition that Raven had spaced it (as I'd spaced mine), and gone back to his farm. And proceeded to tell the crowd (much bigger than at my workshop) about Northern Shamanism- mostly from what Raven's told me about over the years. At least I kept them amused. Luckily, an hour is not much time to fill, and a basic overview of almost anything can fill up an hour, so it wasn't difficult, although I'm sure Raven, having experienced it, would have done better.
Again, we packed up- oh yes, the beautifully clear sky clouded up and sprinkled us liberally at 4:30 just as they started the ritual. Someone had been overheard to say that they wanted to see a rainbow- but it might be unfair to blame the rain on them. Or not. (we did) We stopped almost immediately at Friendlies for a supper, and got home at 9.

Obviously I didn't watch much while working on the cookbooks, but this week I caught a silly movie called The Gamers: Dorkness Rising which was intentionally a low-budget, silly movie, and no one who hasn't gamed would get most of the jokes. On the other hand, anyone who has gamed is going to find it hilarious. For example, when a the one running the game needs to let one person know that his character knows something that the other characters don't he passes him the information on a piece of paper. If you don't know that you won't understand why it's funny, or when arguing about rules is, or... Anyway, if you game, go watch it. If you don't, avoid it, I'm sure you'll think it's cheap and stupid. But heck, they are portraying dorks. (Right down to finally breaking up at three, and heading out for waffles.)

Yesterday I got a new book on Anglo-Saxons. Actually, it's not that new, it's called Migration and Mythmaking and the introduction includes the author wondering whether he should have re-written it because of all that's been learned since it came out. I'm excited because I've seen it referred to in several other books. Just looking through the introduction has gotten the juices flowing. He's looking at the way cultures see themselves, as expressed through their origin myths. Have you noticed that the big English mythos is about Arthur (who can be said ultimately to have failed to prevent the Anglo-Saxons from becoming the winners. Heck Robin Hood is about the Saxons when they were the losers. We do seem to have a fondness for those who fight against insurmountable odds. This fellow is looking at the Hengist and Horsa "Adventus" of the Saxons coming to England. I've been reading about that in the End of Roman Britain (the point of which seems to be that Rome was just a veneer, and the Celts were closer in philosophy to the next wave of (germanic) invaders, which is why they changed from Roman British to Anglo-Saxon so (relatively) easily. There seems to have been a good deal of identifying with the Children of Israel being led to the "promised land" by the Anglo-Saxons. Gee, what a surprise, if you've invaded someone else's country and stolen their land, you want to blame it on God! That sounds awfully familiar. Essentially it seems to be a "might makes right" scenario.
The basic American myth (which should be remembered by politicians) is of a people, made up of those who "didn't play well with others" showing willingness to put in a lot of work and take risks in order to get what they want, and then rising up (to the point of taking up arms against their own government) to insist "you're not the boss of me!" when it looked like their parent government was going to take what *they'd* built away from them. There are other myths of course. The descendants of the waves of immigrants that came in the 19th and 20th centuries have the myth of the "Land of Opportunity" Myth. (This was heavily reinforced by the California and Alaskan gold rushes; but once again, the idea that great success is available to those who are willing to work and take risks.) That, obviously, has changed. One can see the reasons that myth was promulgated- the original european settlers still had the image of America as having infinite, exploitable natural resources, and their great need at the time was (infinite, exploitable) manpower. That we no longer need bodies to fill our low paying jobs, and all the available natural resources have been claimed, the functional myth has had to change. Risks and hard work no longer appear to bring rewards (although I think there was an echo of it in the dot.com bust of the 90s).
There's another American myth- the black one. One can see why, although the slavers tended to be other Africans, the white slave owners provided daily reinforcement for the resentment the African slaves felt, so that as their myth developed, it became the whites that enslaved them. It relates far more directly to the need for cheap labor, while it retains the mythic ability to overpower facts. I wonder what the myth that is being created by the current hispanic and asian immigrants is going to be?
I know the myth of my (the baby boom) generation was of an idyllic America where we were the "good guys" who saved democracy in the world wars, everyone was free and equal (not thinking about racial discrimination), where medicine and technology would solve all our problems. It was this innocence that allowed the baby boomers to become hippies- having not known farming, they thought that if you put a seed in the ground, it would grow- as in eden. Their parents, having grown up in the depression had made sure that they had no clue about the uglier aspects of reality, continuing to take care of us in what my mother called "the baby boomerang generation" moving back in on them.
I've watched as the neo-pagan and heathen movements create their own origin myths (and often bought into them, which has led to my current attitude that I can't even trust my own experiences- but they are still the best I have to go on). I remember the Wiccans exchanging stories of "the Old Religion", of witchcraft as the remnants of ancient paganism, the feminists talking about an peaceful, agricultural, (probably vegetarian) matriarchal pre-history before it the war-mongering patriarchal nomads invaded. I remember the stories of Gardener and Margaret Murray and the "9 million witches burned at the stake". Now I watch as pagans attempt not simply to secure their rights to freedom of religion, but to do so by creating a pan-pagan community. Like that even happened. The closest thing they had was empires (Rome, China, India) that happened to be pagan ,and the centralized authority was powerful enough to keep each of the local pagan groups from killing each other, which they didn't want to do because they practiced the wrong religion, but simply because they were "not us" so taking their stuff was OK, even if it meant killing them to (or by) doing so.
Because of the amount of information we have now, it's harder to convince ourselves that "others" are so different. But, for whatever reasons, having given up the comfort of "us/them", we lack an "us" to give us a sense of security. So many people create groups of those with whom they are close "This is my REAL family!" you hear all the time. The heathen are fond of setting up groups aimed at approximating tribes, so they can have an "innangard and utgard" (an "us and them"). Everyone wants to be part of the us, but that avoids looking at the question of "them". Look at some of the bloodiest recent conflicts- in Rwanda, in Afghanistan, before you can commit atrocities, you must first make sure that your victims are "them". That's what tribalism does, and I don't think it's something we want more of.

I was a part of that idyllic period of American history. We could play outside, or walk home with our friends, and then call Mother to ask if we could stay to play. When I was a little girl my best friends were Mary Aston Bowne and Beth Roberts- either of them would be willing to sit and read or draw, and think it a good time. Mary lived in the house where my father had been born (it always confused me because it was their dining room, and I had a hard time thinking of it as a bedroom). Beth's father was a history professor at the college (Farmington was a college town). He always said that he had no intention of correcting spelling and grammar in college papers, only the history. But there was one correction he would make- if the student wrote that a man was hung, Mr. Roberts would change it to hanged. He said that "That had a special meaning in Brownsville." It seemed like our mothers were always having babies five each I think- we each had friends of the same grades. They'd come out to our camp to swim, and we'd go shopping for school clothes "over to Lewiston" (although I can't imagine that our mothers would have allowed us that colloquialism) before school started. Can you imagine two women trying to organize nine girls and one boy? A saleswoman once remarked that while she usually could tell whose children were whose, they both snapped at or slapped whoever was nearby, and she had no idea which of us belonged to which mother. When we moved down to Winchester, mother got a chance to see more of Pat than she would have because Pat's kidneys gave out and she had to stay down here about half the time to get dialysis, until they found her a kidney. She did very well on that kidney- I think longer than most people did with "cadaver kidneys". I remember there was a party when it got old enough to vote. Eventually it did fail, and then Beth gave her one. But then last week I guess that gave up too. The last time I was up visiting Dad, we went over to see her, and she looked just about the same as always. Gwyl had died a few years ago, and now I guess they are together again. I still remember her asking me where my mother was when I first walked up the street to see Beth on my own (I was three- and I hadn't told my mother, but I knew the way). I'm sure both of them were horrified, and I was probably spanked. I can't remember than, just her. My life has been so filled with wonderful people (and darn it, I'm speaking on Saturday, and will miss her funeral). Better than having a life full of rat bastards I guess.

Well, I must wrap this up and go get supper on. I keep thinking this letter only takes a couple of hours to write- but then I do other things at the same time and half the day is gone.
Today, for instance, I've been working on the schedule for the clan Jane and I are doing at Twilight Covening. Try to get a decent overview of divination in in less than 15 hours! And they keep interrupting the clan time to do rituals. I've figured out what it is that I dislike about rituals. Rituals are a mechanism for putting you into a special state to interact with divinity. I think people should learn to live their lives so that they are always in touch with the spiritual side of things, and see rituals as a way of separating the sacred from life. Well, at least now I know WHY they bother me so much. That and the weird energy patterns they create. As a healer I like to normalize energy patterns, not make them different.
Still, I like maintaining some semblance of contact (with the letter), and occasionally people write back. (Kerensa has written telling me about his psychology class, which is embarrassingly easy, and my in-laws Steve and Vicki are back in the Middle East "biking for peace", and their letters are both inspiring and disturbing.)

Holidays:
16 Cinnamon Raisin Bread Day, Working Parents Day & Step-family Day
17 Apple Dumpling Day, Constitution Day (constitution signed in 1787, pretty cool) & Bloodiest Day (anniversary of Battle of Antidam- NOT cool)
18 Chocolate Day, Respect Day, Water Monitoring Day
19 Butterscotch Pudding Day, POW/MIA Day, Student Day, all overshadowed by Talk Like a Pirate Day http://www.talklikeapirate.com/sounds/TLAPD_smith.html
20 Rum Punch Day, Gibberish Day, Wife Appreciation Day
21 Pecan Cookie Day, Int. Day of Peace, Alzheimer' Day
22 Ice Cream Cone Day, National White Chocolate Day, Autumn Equinox, Hobbit Day, Elephant Appreciation Day

Tchipakkan
'Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?' - Mark Twain